Shakespeare Studies

Shakespeare has long been considered the pre-eminent poet and dramatist of the English-speaking world. But although he is the most frequently performed playwright in the world, little attention has been paid to theatrical production of his plays outside the English language. This is the first collection to offer a considered account of contemporary Shakespeare performance in non-English-speaking theatres. Most of the essays focus on Europe, some on Asia. They investigate text and translation theory, the significance of the visual, acting, directing and audience culture, intercultural performance, political appropriation and dissent. Dennis Kennedy introduces the topic within the context of postwar performance, and his Afterword challenges Anglocentric standards of Shakespeare interpretation.

"Shakespeare's works occupy a prismatic and complex position in world culture: they straddle both the high and the low, the national and the foreign, literature and theatre. The Second World War presents a fascinating case study of this phenomenon: most, if not all, of its combatants have laid claim to Shakespeare and have called upon his work to convey their society's self-image. In wartime, such claims frequently brought to the fore a crisis of cultural identity and of competing ownership of this 'universal' author. Despite this, the role of Shakespeare during the Second World War has not yet been examined or documented in any depth."

This book, with a foreword by Arthur F. Kinney, covers the major issues of the stage history and translation in the negotiation between Romanian culture and Shakespeare, raising questions about what aShakespeare play becomes when incorporated in a different andallegedly liminal culture."

"Les Kurbas - director, actor, playwright, filmmaker, and translator - was the first artist to introduce Shakespeare to the Ukrainian stage. Creating the foundations of Soviet Ukrainian theatre and cinema, he was also responsible for its avant-garde direction. Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn is the first book-length study in English of Kurbas's modernist productions of Shakespeare and the first book on Soviet Shakespeare productions in Ukraine in any language. Situating Shakespeare within the ideological and cultural debates and conflicts of the early Soviet period, Irena Makaryk traces the trajectory of Shakespeare's and Kurbas's fortunes while also investigating the challenges that modernism posed to early Soviet ideology. "

"The works of William Shakespeare have long been embraced by communist and socialist governments. One of the central cultural debates of the Soviet period concerned repertoire, including the usefulness and function of pre-revolutionary drama for the New Man and the New Society."

Also available electronically via Internet Archives

"Zdenek Stribrny, an internationally respected Shakespeare scholar, was Professor of English and American Studies at Charles University, Prague, until the Russian occupation of 1968. He was reinstated after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. This volume, prefaced by a new autobiographical introduction, collects papers on Shakespeare, most of which were written originally in English, from various periods of his eventful career."